


Puddle Jumper

by cookinguptales



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-16 12:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16086188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/pseuds/cookinguptales
Summary: After Sara agrees to watch Jason Funderberker (the frog) while Wirt (the human) goes on vacation, her dreams turn... strange.





	Puddle Jumper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [partypaprika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/gifts).



> This is technically a post-canon fic, but time's a strange thing in dreams and the Unknown. So the timeline may be a little loosey-goosey at times. Also, there are hints of Sara/Wirt in this, but it's not really present enough to warrant a tag. Definitely no more than in canon.

It was unusual, to be sure, but no one faulted Wirt and Greg’s parents for taking them out of school for a week that winter. It had been a close call for them, a really close call, and Wirt had gotten more nervous as the weather fiercened.

Maybe it was the cold, the kids at school had whispered. That river had been so _cold_. That’s what everyone said, anyway.

Sara ignored them. She thought it was good that Wirt and Greg were going to have a little vacation. That they were going someplace warm for a few days. They deserved it. Wirt deserved it. She was a little jealous, even. Not many people got to go to the beach in the middle of December.

It did, however, bring up the question of the frog.

Greg had really thrown a tantrum over Jason Funderberker, but the simple fact of the matter was that they couldn’t take him with them. Customs would have had a field day.

So that was how Wirt had ended up on her doorstep, babbling apologies and holding a terrarium to his chest like it was his whole world. He’d made her a new mixtape as a thank you, he’d said. He’d even let her borrow his tape player so she could listen to it while he was out of town.

Sara would have done it without the tape, to be entirely honest, but she liked getting those tapes from him. They were… sweet. So she’d taken the tape and she’d taken the frog and she’d hugged him goodbye.

She’d even had the grace not to smile too much when he went bright, bright red.

Everything was fine, great even — until the dreams started.

* * *

_She was alone on a winding road, and in the distance, a tiny pinprick of light darted and danced between the trees. It was a lantern, she realized, being held by a hand that shook. She took one step towards the light, then another. There was a part of her, a small, lonely sliver of darkness, that called to that light. It wanted to be filled up, to consume and be consumed and mingle with that faraway flame, and it was a sort of yearning that Sara had never felt before._

_Or maybe she had, in another life._

_The rest of her, though, the her of the here and now, froze in the cool night air. It saw that flame for what it was: the bobbing lure of a hunter in the night._

_Sara turned around and went back the way she’d come, letting the darkness around her and throughout her swallow her whole._

Sara’s eyes shot open, and she could feel sweat slick against her skin. A nightmare? She’d never — she’d never had a dream like that before. It had felt so real and yet so foreign at the same time, like a memory from infancy, unclear but unmistakably her own.

She shivered and pulled the covers more tightly around her shoulders. Beside her, Jason Funderberker croaked placidly on her desk.

* * *

_The woods again. The woods. There was daylight this time, filtering down through crisp autumn leaves and dappling the ground in front of her. There was a quiet singing floating on the breeze, a child or — or maybe a bird._

_A bird, Sara decided. It had to be, so far out in the forest._

_“Hello?” she asked. “Is somebody out there?”_

_Why would someone be out there? It was just a bird. It had to be a bird._

_She breathed in, a little shakily. Then, “Wirt?”_

_No, of course not. Wirt would never be in a place like this. His voice quavered like the wind through the leaves. He was too shy, too uncertain, to plant his feet in this dirt and survive._

_“Wirt?” she whispered again. She still expected to see him there, standing still amongst the trees._

_A clatter of wings behind her, and the song abruptly stopped. “Wirt. I know that name.”_

_Sara turned around._

The sunlight, when she opened her eyes, felt truer than it ever had in those woods. She closed her eyes again and let it wash over her face, burning away the vague unease dripping down the back of her neck.

When she opened her eyes again, she reasoned, the woods would be gone. There would be no more strange dreams or haunting songs. It would just be a normal Saturday morning, and she would just be a little late for practice. Her stomach would settle itself and the dread would seep away.

She opened her eyes to see Jason Funderberker sitting there with his eyes slitted half-open. He wasn’t watching her, though. His eyes were fixed on the bluebird perched outside her window.

* * *

_“Why is this happening?” she murmured. “This isn’t right.”_

_“It isn’t _usual,_ ” her companion corrected her tartly. He was an old man that she’d never met before, but had known all her life. “Drink your tea. It’ll fortify you.”_

_She sipped at the tea he’d poured her. There was a weathered old tea tin on his table, _ENDICOTT_ written on it in looping letters, and it didn’t seem to suit him. Not him or the chipped mug he’d placed into her hands just before the dream had begun._

_“It’s my daughter’s favorite,” he continued, as if she’d given him any encouragement at all. “I saved it for — for a good long time. It’s proper tea. Solid tea, with an old, old name.”_

_Endicott. Quincy, her mind supplied. She’d heard that name once — no, she’d seen it. She’d seen it somewhere… Sara shook her head. “Why am I here?”_

_“We all come to the Unknown eventually, don’t we? It calls to us. Haunts us.” He paused. “But no one belongs in these woods.”_

_She swallowed, feeling the tea start to dry out her tongue. “How do I get home?” she asked._

_“Same way you got here, I s’pose. Go back over the bridge.”_

_She stared at him. “Bridge? What bridge?”_

_“The one you allowed into your house, you fool!” He glared at her for a moment, then shut his eyes tight, mumbling something she couldn’t quite catch. When the old man looked at her again, he just seemed very tired. “You should never allow a power into your life that you can’t control, child. That’s how the Beast takes hold.”_

_“The Beast?” That… didn’t sound good._

_“Yes, yes, the Beast. He’s quiet now, oh yes, but not for long. Never for long. The Beast is eternal. His song will live on.”_

_Sara thought of bluebird song and the stammering of wind through leaves. “A song…” she murmured._

_“His song.” The man’s gaze was far away. “Go back home, child. Steel yourself and run as fast as you can before you see the lantern light. Be strong. Be quick.”_

_Sara blinked at him. “But I’ve already seen the light,” she said._

_“What?” he asked, and his gray face grew pale. “When—“_

_“Father?” A voice from the doorway. “You didn’t tell me we had a guest.”_

_He shook his head, almost violently. “Go! Go…”_

“Go.”

The word was on her lips when she woke up, and she didn’t try to banish it. She just curled in on herself in her bed, trying to leech as much warmth as she could from her blankets, and tried not to think about a lantern far away in the darkness.

This was… this was wrong. It was all wrong. These weren’t normal dreams. These woods, they weren’t a normal place. There was something unnatural going on, something she couldn’t begin to untangle on her own.

_Dear Wirt,_ she thought, mentally composing a letter that she did not have the composure to send. _What the heck is going on? Do you know what’s in those woods? Why do they know you, and why don’t they know you like I do?_

This was something to do with him, she knew it. With Wirt and Greg and that bizarre frog they’d given her to care for. And now it was something to do with her.

* * *

_She lay on her back in the woods, and snow slowly drifted down around her._

_“These aren’t your woods, are they?” No. No. “This isn’t your winter.”_

_It was a voice like the distant rumble of thunder. Like the ringing of a bell. Like a spider creeping across her web, inexorably, towards her prey. It was the Beast._

_“There’s still springtime in your mind. I can feel it.” The words curled around her like a cat, like a goddamn straightjacket. “This isn’t your snow.”_

_“Everyone’s got snow,” she heard her own voice say. “And we’ve all got spring, too.”_

_The silence around her was palpable. The woods didn’t even breathe._

_“No. There is an end to all things. The cold will capture you one day.”_

_She breathed out a sigh that sounded almost like a laugh. “Man, that’s not even how seasons work. You know that, right? Winter isn’t the end of anything. Things just… keep going. Even if it sucks,” she said, and this was — this was so strange, wasn’t it? Speaking in riddles that she didn’t even understand. But the words felt right. Sounded right._

_“This isn’t your snow.”_

_“I know.” She was pretty sure who this snowstorm had belonged to, once. “It’s not his anymore, either.”_

_“It will always be his.”_

_“And he’ll never be yours,” she continued, her voice rising above his. “None of us will be.”_

_The air was still for a long, long time. Snowflakes fell, but they melted against her skin. The dusk deepened, shadows lengthened, until all she could see was darkness and the faintest glimpse of light out of the corner of her eye._

_“You do not belong here.”_

_“No,” she said. “I just don’t belong to you.”_

_The light went out, abrupt in its absence, and Sara was left alone with the stars._

The room was still dark when Sara opened her eyes. But the night didn’t feel heavy here, not here in her bedroom, not here in this world.

She stared up at the ceiling. “It’s you, isn’t it?” she asked. “You’re the bridge, Jason Funderberker.”

Jason Funderberker bleated at her from her desk, and what kind of answer was that? It wasn’t an answer at all. Maybe there weren’t any answers.

_Ain’t that always the way._

After a few more minutes had passed, Sara pushed the covers back from her legs and swung herself out of bed. It took her a few minutes to find it, that tape Wirt had made her, the new one. She slid it into his tape player and pressed PLAY, then laid back in her bed, eyes staring at everything and nothing.

The soft sounds of clarinet spilled out into her room, and it was a song that he’d made up himself. It was too discordant to be anything else, but strangely sweet all the same. She breathed in and in and in and tried to ignore the Beast’s song between its notes.

* * *

“Thank you so much for watching him, Sara. I — I really am sorry about this.”

“Don’t be sorry, Wirt,” she said, patting his hand and trying not to wince at how sweaty it was. “It wasn’t a big deal. I like frogs.”

“Still, I—“

“Did you have a good vacation?” she interrupted.

Wirt blinked at her, and she could almost see his brain rebooting itself, changing gears. “Yeah. Yeah, it was great. We went to the beach and — hey, did you listen to that tape I left you?” His hand plucked at his jeans, a nervous gesture if she’d ever seen one. “It wasn’t much, but…”

“I liked it,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie. There was something charming about Wirt’s rough edges, and there was a strength below them that she was just starting to see for herself. “It felt like… spring.”


End file.
